


ocean blue moments (and other shipwreck stories)

by smudgesofink



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/F, Fluff, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nakamaship, Relationship Study, Straw Hats being a family, follows after Alabasta Arc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26617048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smudgesofink/pseuds/smudgesofink
Summary: Or, the Straw Hats and their stories in between the adventures.(A collection of stand-alone fics about the Straw Hat Pirates)
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy & Mugiwara Kaizoku | Strawhat Pirates, Monkey D. Luffy/Roronoa Zoro, Nami/Nefertari Vivi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 65





	1. Nami/Vivi: my sheets still hold your warmth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ValeriaSinclaire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValeriaSinclaire/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Nami shares a bed with a girl is when Vivi joins them as they leave Whiskey Peak.

///

The first time Nami shares a bed with a girl is when Vivi joins them as they leave Whiskey Peak.

The women’s quarters is big enough for both of them. There’s a bed and a couch, enough pillows and blankets in the storage room, and absolutely no reason for them to sleep in one bed—except that Nami wakes up during the first night to the sound of crying and when she finally sits up to look at her roommate, Vivi all but shrinks on herself.

“Sorry.” Vivi’s mouth trembles as she curls up on the bed, her wide eyes are lined red with sadness and exhaustion alike. It makes her beauty look heartbreaking. “Sorry for waking you, Nami-san. Sorry.”

Nami sighs.

She stands up without a word, dragging her blanket along with her as she walks to where the bed is and doesn’t stop until she’s kneeling on the mattress and pushing Vivi to make some space.

“Nami-san?” Vivi blinks at her, confused even as Nami settles by her side. “What—”

“Hush,” Nami scolds gently, reaching to pull this strange, sad girl’s body against hers. She tucks Vivi’s head under her chin and pets her hair.

She knows nothing about this girl, Nami realizes. Nothing of the royalty she claims to be, nothing of this kingdom she’s trying to save, nothing of what makes her worth helping. But Nami knows tears and Nami knows grief when she sees it, whether in daylight or in the shadows of a bedroom.

“What can your sorry do?” Nami asks, harsh words made soft in her whisper. “You silly girl.”

It makes Vivi hiccup wetly, makes her tremble inside Nami’s arms. “Sorry,” is all Vivi can say as the tears start again, polite even in her mourning. She has just seen her servant be swallowed in an explosion and still, she apologizes. Nami has half a mind to scold her again. “I’m sorry.”

“Make up your mind,” Nami tells her. Her hands are careful and strong as she holds Vivi. She knows from experience that hands cannot be anything less if they are to hold broken girls, no matter if they are princesses or orphans. “If you’re going to cry, then cry. Don’t apologize for it.”

“Okay,” Vivi chokes out. “Okay, Nami-san.”

She cries against Nami’s collarbone for hours.

Nami holds her—this stranger, this sad, sad beautiful girl—and she holds her strong and careful. Nami pets her hair and Nami lets her cry and when the shy dawn arrives, peeking at the small windows of the door, Nami lets Vivi sleep in her arms.

///

The second time Nami sleeps on the same bed as Vivi, Nami’s skin is burning with fever and her bones ache with a deep agony. It’s been three days since Nami has taken an easy breath, three days since her mouth has not felt shriveled up and desert-dry.

Her temperature only spikes further as the third night comes.

The pain makes Nami’s eyes water. She blinks them back as a hollow cough rattles in her chest and feels chills despite the heat of her body. With her remaining energy, Nami tries to desperately tug the sheets closer—they weigh a ton, it seems like, and her clammy, fumbling hands can’t pull them.

Just as Nami is about to give up the fight, Vivi appears by her bedside, dutifully worried. “Nami-san, what do you need?”

“I’m,” Nami hisses a short breath between her teeth, wincing at the sudden pain in her chest. She’s been getting more and more of those the longer her illness stays. “It’s c-cold, Vivi.”

The worried crease between Vivi’s brows deepen. She looks into Nami’s haze-sick eyes and gives a resolute nod before saying, “Please scoot over, Nami-san.”

Nami’s next breath comes out as a shudder. “W-What?”

Vivi’s hands coax her stiff body to move until there is enough space for Vivi to slide under the covers and envelop Nami completely into an embrace. Vivi is warm when Nami’s icy fingers curl around her arm in reflex, her breaths deep and full and soft. Her legs tangle with Nami’s cold feet but Vivi doesn’t voice out a single complaint about it.

“Idiot,” Nami rasps. Her eyes flutter shut and sting with tears when Vivi presses her soft mouth against her forehead. “You’ll get sick.”

“If the illness is contagious, Nami-san,” Vivi says against her skin, “then I would have already caught it by the first day.”

“Stubborn,” Nami forces out in a pretense of annoyance. Her lips tremble around the word—being held by Vivi shouldn’t feel as tender as it does right now. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yes,” Vivi agrees softly.

She does not mention what must feel like Nami’s scorching skin. She does not mention the sweaty covers, or the small, cramped bed, or Nami’s defensive façade. Vivi breathes deep and quiet instead, and says, like a promise, “You’ll be okay, Nami-san. We’ll make you be okay again.”

Nami presses her mouth tight and her eyes shut and settles with resignation inside Vivi’s arms. If Vivi catches any of Nami’s tears trailing down her flushed cheeks, she says nothing about them either.

///

The last time they share a bed, Alabasta has been saved.

They stay in one of the royal guest bedrooms—Nami, and all of her freakishly strong idiot crewmates. The night falls quicker in the desert. Or at least, that’s how it seems to Nami, who has watched quietly out one of the tall windows as the sun sank and darkness overtook the skies.

Nami is still awake when the moon blooms, no matter how hard she tries to sleep like the others. There is an ache in her arms that is not caused by injuries. There is a weight in her chest that refuses to leave, despite Nami’s attempts to exhale it away.

 _Everything’s fine now,_ Nami reassures her stupid heart. _Everyone is safe. Let me sleep._

The door creaks, then—Nami tenses, jolts up in bed ready to wake everyone up for a fight, but her breath catches in her throat as soon as she sees Vivi with her body half-inside the room, wide-eyed with her cerulean hair loose and tumbling down in waves against her nightgown.

The ache in Nami’s arms intensifies. The weight in her chest doubles. She ignores it all.

“Vivi,” Nami says instead. “What’s wrong?”

Vivi shakes her head, wordlessly. She tiptoes across the room without answering Nami’s question and has one leg into Nami’s blankets before Nami realizes what’s happening. Nami tries not to let too much fondness bleed out from her smile as Vivi pillows her head on one of her arms.

They lie facing each other and take a breath in sync.

The ache in Nami’s arms vanish, and her chest calms itself down.

Vivi smiles hesitantly. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Nami echoes and hates the how achingly soft the word comes out. “Can’t sleep?”

“It seems so,” Vivi confesses. “I—I felt like something was missing.”

“Something?”

“Someone,” Vivi clarifies.

“Oh.” Nami’s heart thunders inside her ribcage. Somewhere in the many other beds, a particularly loud snore rings out. “Luffy?” Nami jokes half-heartedly.

Vivi blinks slow, unwavering. “You,” she says.

“Vivi,” Nami begins desperately. There are rules, in Nami’s world. One of them is probably about not falling head over heels in love for the princess of a faraway land, despite how beautiful or tender-hearted or strong-willed she may be. Another is to not fall in love at all. “Vivi, I—”

“What would I be,” Vivi whispers, hushed, and Nami falls quiet, “without Nami-san?”

“Rich,” Nami jokes again, and this time Vivi graces her with a small smile. “A billion berries richer.”

“Sleepless,” Vivi answers back gently, unfairly. “I’m too used to sleeping beside you now. I’ll be tired all the time.”

“You’ll be okay,” Nami says. Even to her own ears, it sounds like a lie. “You were okay before us, and you will be okay after us.”

Vivi shakes her head.

“You can stay,” Vivi says next. Even as she says it, the defeat is clear in her smile. It breaks something inside Nami to witness it. “You can stay here with me.”

“I’ll steal all the jewelry,” Nami points out, smiling when Vivi gives a choked laugh. “I’ll only cause trouble here. And if I leave them,” Nami swallows the lump in her throat, “those idiots will die at sea.”

 _They’re my family,_ is what Nami doesn’t say, and doesn’t have to. Vivi hears it loud and clear. _I can’t leave them behind for anything._

“Okay,” Vivi whispers. “It’s okay.”

Nami doesn’t bother asking Vivi to come with them. To come with her. She refuses to hurt Vivi that way, refuses to add to the many difficult choices Vivi has been making ever since her country fell apart. Nami refuses to make this beautiful girl sadder than she already is.

So Nami doesn’t say anything. She knocks their foreheads together instead, and tells Vivi, “I’ll draw a map of the world for you.”

Vivi smiles, painfully soft. “I’ll make this country thrive for you.”

“Promise?” Nami asks.

“Promise.”

They seal it with a kiss.


	2. Zoro & Luffy: this pride of mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Guys like Bellamy can’t take away my pride. Not when I have things worth being proud of and they don’t.”
> 
> Like your strength. Like your brightness and your heart, Zoro thinks. He asks anyway, “Like what?”
> 
> “Like my dreams,” Luffy answers. “Like my nakama and how great you guys are. Like Zoro, and how you stick by me.” Luffy smiles then, for the first time since the bar fight, and Zoro can’t help but bask in its radiance. “As long as I’m with all of you, no one can take away my pride.”

In Mock Town, Zoro stands tall and keeps his head up as he bleeds on the dirty floor of a bar.

He does not fight, no matter the sting of rum and broken glass cutting his forehead open as Bellamy breaks a bottle on his head. He does not fight, no matter the howling laughter of the bar patrons as one of Bellamy’s underlings drive a sharp elbow to his stomach. He does not fight, no matter the itch in his palms to draw his swords and paint the bar counters bloody with Bellamy’s guts.

Zoro lets go instead, lets himself be numb to the warmth of fresh blood oozing slowly from his wounds, and breathes out the ache of bruised ribs. He stares blankly ahead to where Nami is watching them from the bar, fists trembling in horror and rage alike. _Fight back,_ her eyes beg. Her lower lip has turned bloodless-white from the pressure of her teeth sinking into it. “Zoro, please,” Nami grits out, and even that falls on deaf ears.

Zoro does not fight, because his captain said so.

Shallow cuts and split lips cannot hurt Zoro. He knows this. He knows that Luffy knows this, too. Zoro has too much strength in his bones and stubbornness in his being to get seriously injured by a man with baseless confidence and garbage coming out of his mouth like Bellamy. Zoro can take all the ways they can come up with to hurt him, and still, he will stand back up without a word.

But as Bellamy knocks back a glass of wine and gathers a mouthful of it, only to spit all over Luffy’s face and grin as Zoro’s captain chokes—

—Zoro finds that it hurts anyway, this deep, burning anger that has housed itself in his chest as Bellamy humiliates Luffy. The audience roars in cruel glee when Luffy coughs, and Zoro’s eyes glaze over from the pain of being unable to do anything about it. He wants to carve them all open and begging. He wants to cut out the tongues that even dared to laugh at Luffy. He wants to—

_“Zoro,” Luffy had said with the resolve of an uncompromising ocean, “Whatever they do, do not fight them.”_

Zoro swallows back the taste of blood in his mouth and everything else in him that screams in agony. He lets himself get thrown across the room and only blinks slowly as Luffy’s bruised body slams on the floor next to him.

He does not fight.

///

Nami is angry at them during the walk back to Going Merry. “ _Idiots_ ,” she hisses, her shoulders still trembling long after they have walked out of the bar. “Both of you!”

“Stop it,” Zoro says when Luffy refuses to speak. “Forget about them.”

“Forget about them?” Nami demands furiously, whirling to look at him as she clenches her fists. Any other day, she would’ve hit them already. Right now, with both their faces dripping blood, she seems to think twice about it despite her anger. “They beat you up and _you let them_. How can you tell me to forget? You should have fought back! They had it coming. They were—they were despicable and disgusting and, and—”

“—not worth fighting,” Zoro cuts in evenly.

Nami thins her lips in displeasure, even as realization dawns in her eyes. She shakes her head and blinks back the tears of frustration and worry from her lashes. “Men,” she scoffs. It’s a watery noise that sounds a lot like understanding. Nami has always been fast on the uptake. “You and your stupid pride.”

“Oi,” Zoro grunts in token protest.

“Ne, Nami,” Luffy says all of a sudden, catching their attention. His eyes are hooded by the shadow of his hat’s brim and the bright spark that is normally there hasn’t returned yet. “It’s kinda sad, huh?”

Both of them turn to him. “What is?” Nami asks.

“That Mock Town doesn’t believe in dreams.”

Even at her angriest, Nami cannot help the way her gaze softens at Luffy. None of them can help it, Zoro thinks, and his next breath comes a little easier, a little less tense. Here, as he walks between Zoro and Nami, Luffy is safe at least. There’s no one to laugh at him here.

“Yeah,” Nami agrees quietly. “That is a little sad.”

The rest of the walk is silent after that.

///

Later, after Chopper has bandaged their wounds and fussed over them and they’re on their way to the house where their next clue about the Sky Island lies, Luffy walks to where Zoro is sitting against Merry’s white railings and takes a seat beside him.

Despite the exhaustion that has taken over him, Zoro opens his eyes to look at Luffy.

Luffy looks back at him. His face looks wrong without his usual beaming smile.

“Everything okay?” Zoro asks lowly.

Luffy blinks. “Yep.”

“You hurt?”

“Nope.”

Zoro gives a sharp nod. “Good,” he says, and finds that he doesn’t have the courage to say anything else. _I’m glad you’re not hurt,_ is what he wants to say but doesn’t, _I’m fucking pissed I couldn’t do more. I wish you’d let me do more. I would have torn them apart for treating you like that, if you had let me._ He lets the words clog in his throat instead and doesn’t budge as Luffy looks at him until he’s had his fill of Zoro and whatever the hell he’s looking for in Zoro’s expression.

Finally, Luffy asks, “Is Zoro okay?”

“Yeah,” Zoro says.

“Is Zoro hurt?”

“No.”

“Is Zoro mad?”

Zoro breathes out heavily and meets Luffy’s dark eyes. “Not at you,” he answers gruffly. _Never at you._ “I understand why you told me not to fight.”

“Zoro’s mad at Bellamy, then.”

 _Of course I am,_ Zoro bites back his snappish retort as something ugly and dark thrums under his skin at the mention of Bellamy’s name. _He hurt you._ He clenches his jaw and forces himself to calm down. “It was difficult,” Zoro grounds out with a meaningful look, “to see my captain be disrespected and humiliated in front of me.”

“But I wasn’t humiliated,” Luffy points out.

Zoro looks at him incredulously. “He spat on you.”

“So?” Luffy says. He’s not quite smiling just yet, but the light in his eyes is returning little by little the more he talks. “Guys like Bellamy can’t take away my pride. Not when I have things worth being proud of and they don’t.”

 _Like your strength. Like your brightness and your heart,_ Zoro thinks. He asks anyway, “Like what?”

“Like my dreams,” Luffy answers. “Like my nakama and how great you guys are. Like Zoro, and how you stick by me.” Luffy smiles then, for the first time since the bar fight, and Zoro can’t help but bask in its radiance. “As long as I’m with all of you, no one can take away my pride.”

Zoro breathes out the emotions that have gathered in his ribcage. “Good,” he repeats, and wills his voice to stay steady. “I won’t accept anything less.”

Luffy drops his head on Zoro’s shoulder. “Thanks, Zoro. I know it was hard to not to fight back. I’m glad Zoro’s not mad at me.”

“You’re my captain,” Zoro says, “I’ll always listen to you, even if you’re an idiot.”

Luffy laughs, a throaty and wonderful sound that diffuses any remaining anger in Zoro’s body. The movement also makes Luffy’s soft hair tickle Zoro’s jaw and Zoro tries his hardest to ignore the flutter in his stomach.

“That makes me happy,” Luffy hums, a soft whistle of sound past his blood-crusted lips. He buries himself closer into Zoro’s side and closes his eyes. “I knew Zoro was a softie.”

“Shut up,” Zoro grouches without any real heat. “And stop making me your damn pillow.”

Even as he says that, Zoro doesn’t move an inch from where he’s sitting. He brings a hand up instead, to card through soft dark hair, and keeps his head up as his captain sleeps.

///

(Still, when Luffy returns just before they set sail for the Sky Island, with his knuckles speckled red with someone else’s blood and his other hand holding the old man Cricket's bag of gold slung over his shoulder, Zoro can’t help the trill of pride that hits him like a wave.

“You beat him up?” Zoro asks with a smirk.

Luffy grins, bright and reckless. “Yep!”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so many feelings about that Mock Town bar fight scene. Seeing Bellamy beat up my two favorite boys is enough to make my heart break. Plus, _you know _Zoro was definitely out for blood as soon as Bellamy first hit Luffy??? If Luffy hadn't told him not to fight, homeboy would've thrown hands so fucking fast.__
> 
> _  
> _Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this! <3_  
>  _


End file.
